Tmux-Power-Zoom
June 30, 2026 ยท View on GitHub
Zoom pane to separate window, and un-zoom back into the original location.
This way you can open other panes whilst focusing on the zoomed pane, without risking getting a crowded mess of panes.
You can also restore by triggering the power-zoom action on the place-holder pane.
Notice - tmux 3.7 is broken
This plugin uses break-pane and on tmux 3.7 using it causes tmux to instantly crash.
The tmux team is aware and the fix is already planned for 3.7a
As a workaround, if this plugin is used on tmux 3.7, it will display an incompatibility warning and abort it's setup before binding any trigger.
Recent changes
- Plugin will refuse to init on tmux 3.7, and display a warning message.
- some code cleanup
- Ignore
@power_zoom_mouse_actionif tmux < 3.0 - Had forgotten to abort if attempt to zoom only pane - fixed
- Removed a previous config variable
power_zoom_mouse
Purpose
Often when zooming a pane, working in it for a while and then figure out a new pane is needed to look something up, the zoomed state is forgotten. When opening a new pane this way, the new pane becomes squeezed in next to the original pane, often far to small to be practically usable.
This plugin zooms panes into a new window and makes it convenient to open support panes. Hitting Zoom again unzooms and move the pane back to it's original location. The temp window closes, if no other panes are present.
The temp windows name uses ID of the zoomed pane, so that if other panes were open and left running, there is a hint about the purpose of that window.
Usage
Hit <prefix> + @power_zoom_trigger to toggle Power Zoom.
If @power_zoom_mouse_action is defined, that mouse action also toggles
Power Zoom.
Install
Dependencies
tmux 2.0 or higher. Needs select-pane -T option. Could be made to work on
earlier version with a bit of rewrite, if anybody has such a need,
create an Issue.
Installation with Tmux Plugin Manager (recommended)
Add plugin to the list of TPM plugins in .tmux.conf:
set -g @plugin 'jaclu/tmux-power-zoom'
Hit prefix + I to fetch the plugin and source it.
Manual installation
Clone the repository:
git clone https://github.com/jaclu/tmux-power-zoom.git ~/clone/path
Add this line to the bottom of .tmux.conf:
run-shell ~/clone/path/power-zoom.tmux
Reload TMUX environment with $ tmux source-file ~/.tmux.conf, and that's it.
Configuration options
| Option | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
@power_zoom_trigger | Z | Key that triggers Power Zoom to toggle |
@power_zoom_without_prefix | 0 | If set to 1, trigger key is independent of <prefix> |
@power_zoom_mouse_action | Defines a mouse action trigger, supports modifiers typically 1 is left button and 3 is right button Examples: DoubleClick3Pane S-DoubleClick3Pane M-DoubleClick3Pane TrippleClick1Pane |
Contributing
Contributions are welcome, and they're appreciated. Every little bit helps, and credit is always given.
The best way to send feedback is to file an issue at tmux-power-zoom/issues